Book­ies tip All Blacks to beat Spring­boks

CAPE TOWN — The All Blacks will com­fort­ably beat the Spring­boks in Satur­day’s Rugby Cham­pi­onship Test in Christchurch, lo­cal book­mak­ers have pre­dicted.

It’s been a tor­rid year for Al­lis­ter Coet­zee’s Spring­boks, who on Satur­day suf­fered their third loss in six matches when they went down 23-17 to the Wal­la­bies in Brisbane.

It fol­lowed a 26-24 re­verse to Ar­gentina in Salta last month, while the Boks’ 30-23 open­ing Rugby Cham­pi­onship win over Los Pu­mas in Nel­spruit was also less than spec­tac­u­lar.

Ear­lier in the sea­son, the Boks scraped home 2-1 in a three-Test se­ries against an in­jury-de­pleted Ire­land.

The world cham­pion All Blacks, mean­while, have steam­rolled all be­fore them, beat­ing Wales 3-0 in a home se­ries, be­fore start­ing their Rugby Cham­pi­onship cam­paign with com­pre­hen­sive wins over the Wal­la­bies (42-8 and 29-9) and then a 57-22 drub­bing of Ar­gentina this past week­end.

Over the years, the Spring­boks and All Blacks have du­elled in 91 Tests. The Ki­wis have won 53 com­pared to South Africa’s 35, while three Tests have ended in draws.

On cur­rent form, the All Blacks should win at a can­ter and there­fore lo­cal book­mak­ers, Sport­ing­bet. co.za, have pre­dicted a 22-point win for the All Blacks on Satur­day.

Mean­while, Aus­tralia have leapfrogged South Africa and moved into third place in the World Rugby rank­ings af­ter chalk­ing up their first win of this year’s Rugby Cham­pi­onship cam­paign.

Tries from rookie Adam Cole­man and cen­tre Bernard Foley, who also kicked 13 points, were enough to end a six-game los­ing streak as Aus­tralia fought back from 14-3 down in­side the first quar­ter to win 23-17.

The Wal­la­bies gain just un­der eight-tenths of a rat­ing point as a re­sult of the vic­tory in Brisbane and move on to 85.02 points in the rank­ings, while the Spring­boks drop to fourth place on 84.30.

In Hamilton, New Zealand were given their sternest test of the year by an Ar­gen­tinian side de­ter­mined to play at the same high tempo as the All Blacks.— Sport24.